A few years ago, after Peter Bevis and wife Helen McGregor had returned from the USA, they were looking for a new angle to replace successful Billy the Bass scheme, and turned their interest to fake title schemes on eBay.

The first scheme the couple laid their eyes on was the Order of the Black Ermine, which was a fake order with various paraphernalia peddled by a man named Richard Holland.

Apparently, the Bevis family started by creating an eBay seller profile confusingly similar to that of Richard Holland, ‘riichard7298’ as opposed to the existing ‘richard7298’. Then they went ahead and tried to register the Order of the Black Ermine trademark to effectively prevent said Mr Holland from continuing to use the order name commercially. According to the blog post linked to above, Mr Holland opposed the creation of the mark, but somehow Peter Bevis must have succeeded at a later stage, because in 2011 the mark was successfully registered to Quality Design (CI) Limited, one of his companies.

Apparently, at this time Quality Design (CI) Limited claimed they had never heard of Peter Bevis, although official Alderney company records clearly show this company to be owned by him.

Moreover, the whole shenanigan also involved Mr Bevis’s filing for the Order of the Black Ermine trademarks in the EU and the USA, highly likely to put the original “order” out of business.

So to what end do the Bevis family intend to use their newly acquired Order of the Black Ermine trademark? We do not know. Perhaps this is a backup plan if the lairdship schemes fail? We also note that they acquired the similar Order of the British Ensign mark a few years ago. What we know for sure is, wherever a Bevis is involved, there is a money-making scheme behind it.